d took out a handful of coins. "That's right, isn't it?"

She counted them over as he gave them to her--bit one with her strong
white teeth and nodded.

"You don't pay ME"--she said, emphatically--"It's the Plaza you pay."

"How many times will you remind me of that!" he replied, with a
laugh--"Of course I know I don't pay YOU! Of course I know I pay the
Plaza!--that amazing hotel and 'sanatorium' with a tropical garden and
no comfort--"

"It is more comfortable than this"--she said, with a disparaging glance
at his log dwelling.

"How do YOU know?" and he laughed again--"What have YOU ever
experienced in the line of hotels? You are employed at the Plaza to
fetch and carry;--to wait on the wretched invalids who come to
California for a 'cure' of diseases incurable--"

"YOU are not an invalid!" she said with a slight accent of contempt.

"No! I only pretend to be!"

"Why do you pretend?"

"Oh, Manella! What a question! Why do we all pretend?--all!--every
human being from the child to the dotard! Simply because we dare not
face the truth! For example, consider the sun! It is a furnace with
flames five thousand miles high, but we 'pretend' it is our beautiful
orb of day! We must pretend! If we didn't we should go mad!"

Manella knitted her black brows perplexedly.

"I do not understand you"--she said--"Why do you talk nonsense about
the sun? I suppose you ARE ill after all,--you have an illness of the
head."

He nodded with mock solemnity.

"That's it! You're a wise woman, Manella! That's why I'm here. Not
tubercles on the lungs,--tubercles on the brain! Oh, those tubercles!
They could never stand the Plaza!--the gaiety, the brilliancy--the--the
all-too dazzling social round!..." he paused, and a gleam of even white
teeth under his dark moustache gave the suggestion of a smile--"That's
why I stay up here."

"You make fun of the Plaza"--said Manella, biting her lips
vexedly--"And of me, too. I am nothing to you!"

"Absolutely nothing, dear! But why should you be any thing?"

A warm flush turned her sunburnt skin to a deeper tinge.

"Men are often fond of women"--she said.

"Often? Oh, more than often! Too often! But what does that matter?"

She twisted the ends of her rose-coloured neckerchief nervously with
one hand.

"You are a man"--she replied, curtly--"You should have a woman."

He laughed--a deep, mellow, hearty laugh of pleasure.

"Should I? You really think so? Wonderful Manella? Come her